Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for ten minutes. Close your eyes and sit upright but relaxed. Breath long deep breaths – gentle breaths without forcing. Allow the breath to naturally deepen. On the out breath gently let go and sink deeper into your own sense of being. Notice how soft and gentle your breath is. Let it be easy (or easeful) and comforting.

Now think of a moment during your day today or sometime recently when you felt judgemental towards someone. When they said something harsh perhaps or did not say something you wanted them to say or they did something that you did not like.

Place your attention on the feeling that goes with your judgement of them. Perhaps you felt anger or irritation. Perhaps you feel they were wrong and you were right. Perhaps you feel justified in judging their behaviour.  Whatever it was, place your attention on the feeling in your body. Not the thoughts, not the narrative of what happened but how it made you feel. Not the story of how you felt but the actual feeling experience in your body. Locate the place where you feel it and notice the bodily sensations that arise. Stay with the feeling sensations in your body and go deeper into them. Notice that below the surface of judgement is a deeper feeling of hurt. It feels unfair or unjust.

Now imagine that same person realising what they did to you and making a genuine apology. Hear them saying I am really sorry that I caused you to feel that way.

And now notice how your feelings change. Don’t get into thinking about it just feel how your bodily sensations have changed. Notice that the harshness of your judgemental state of being – and the deeper feeling of “hurtness” melts into a softer feeling. Notice that the feeling of that softening feels like who you really are. It feels like home. It feels like love. It feels like that place in you that you keep protected against any hurt. And when you imagined that person who hurt you genuinely apologise it is like they saw into the real you. The loving heart at the centre of you that feels unseen unrecognised by the world around you.

This is what happened to you when you were very young. It happened to all of us. Small children are just full of love. They want to give love and they need to receive it. For a small child there is no separation. They do not give love in order to receive it. Love flows out from them and they feel it return but it is not two separate things just one flowing movement of love.

A moment arrives for all of us when we notice that our love is not being returned. It happens time and again and we pick our little selves up and return to love. But there is a time – one time when the hurt is too much. The feeling of being separate from love is too painful. That is the moment when we decided to keep back our love and not to express it fully anymore because we couldn’t bear the loss of being immersed in love. So rather protect it – keep it precious – keep it safe – hide it from the world and let no one see. So that we do not get hurt again. We made the decision that we are separate that the world outside does not understand us. That is when ego was born in us. That is when we decided we are alone and separate.

Now imagine that that loving heart just wants to express love all the time. Imagine that it is not ever really hurt. The sense of hurt comes from the sense that you are separate. Imagine that the feeling of love is just always there pouring out from the ether within you into the ether outside you like beautiful celestial music from a radio station that is always broadcasting. That in fact it is not yours and it is not your precious and does not need to be protected. It is in fact all pervading and you are an instrument tuning in to its frequency, vibrating and resonating to the frequency of universal love. Because it is all pervading it is also who you are.